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Wednesday afternoon, I’m on the Pink Line, staring into space, exhausted from teaching a 4-hour morning class after a night when I couldn’t sleep.

50sish white dude with a baseball cap and a Sox jersey: “I like your sunglasses, where did you get them?”

I don’t know how to describe this, but everything about the too-casual way he’s asking is fishy and ulterior. He’s working up to asking me for something – whether money or conversation or whatever – and I know I don’t want to talk to him.

But on the off-chance he’s sincere (they are good sunglasses), I say “Eye Spy, on Lincoln.”

He goes on chattering about the sunglasses and what he likes about them, and where exactly is that place, is it the one on such-and-such corner? And then he asks if I’m a student because I look like I just came from class. And you guys? I was done. I was so, so, so very tired. So I just stared at him without talking. I’m not sure I even meant to be mean – I was too tired to even think of anything to say.

And then he repeated himself: “ARE…YOU….COMING…FROM…SCHOOL…you know, because you have a backpack?”

I did not respond.

He waved and then SNAPPED his fingers in front of my face. “Hellooooooo!” and I kept staring at him.

And then he got weirded out and backed away from me, muttering about how rude some people are, and went into the next car.

I saw him yesterday on the train again (glory, we must have a similar schedule) and he said “Heyyyyy, it’s the mean girl with the glasses” and I gave him the death glare again until he moved away.

Obviously casting Imperious Glare or whatever isn’t magic protection from someone with truly bad intent, but I felt pretty great when he was the one to get uncomfortable and move away.